Today, one of the most controversial figures in the entire world is Donald Trump. For awhile, Donald Trump was known for being an aggressive, wealthy businessman who was constantly offending people with his public comments and actions. Trump is now the center of attention in the United States because he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president.

 

In the past, Donald Trump has proven time and time again what an incredibly offensive and arrogant man he chooses to be. During his run for president, Trump has continued to show the country just how crazy he can be with numerous comments and political antiques that have left people stunned.

 

After the first GOP debate on August 6^th, Trump had some crude things to say about Megyn Kelly, a political commentator and journalist for Fox News and the host for the first GOP debate. The day after the event, Trump commented, “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions, … You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base.”

 

A year ago, if you told people that Donald Trump would own the majority of the Republican vote for president, most people would call you crazy. Today, many people say that there is no way that Trump will win the election, even though he is about to win the Republican nomination. The reality is, there is a good possibility that Trump can end up winning the election. However, there is a good chance that his presidency would bring a great deal of turmoil and hardship on the United States. If elected president, Donald Trump will ruin America.

 

Before we dive into how Donald Trump is the worst choice for president, we should try to understand why Trump is in this promising situation of becoming the Republican presidential candidate. The main thing Trump was known for before he started running for president was suing people.

 

Trump would always threaten and tarnish people on social media but, whenever someone would say something slightly offensive about him, he would try to publicly humiliate the person by filing a lawsuit against them for slander. Throughout the presidential race, Trump has basically been doing the same thing but, against the other candidates; which, unfortunately, is politics.

 

The reason Trump has such a far lead in the presidential race is because he is a great politician. He would constantly take jabs at Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio but, whenever they would retaliate he would act like the victim and deny that he ever slandered anyone. People love watching Trump because he is entertaining and unpredictable; people want to see what he is going to do next. The only problem is, with all this attention, Trump ended up becoming a very popular candidate for the white, not-so-bright voters.

 

Whenever Trump promoters give their reasons as to why they love Trump, they always give vague reasons that make him a great politician but, no hard evidence or reasoning that would make him a great president. These voters say things like “He’s going to make America great again,” or “He’s a great businessman, he’ll run the country like he runs his business.”

 

Since Trump is so far ahead in the polls, he must share some attributes with past successful, American politicians. In 1987, David G. Winters, a Psychology professor at Wesleyan University, conducted a study on the appealing qualities of past U.S. presidents from Washington to Reagan. Winters found out that many of the past presidents have held the constant of being natural leaders with the ability to charm the American people with their unique, personal appeal and performance. To Winters, the charismatic leader has, “a certain quality of personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.”

 

Even though Donald Trump is a horrible person, he is a natural leader. Trump has been making hard decisions his entire life. In 1971, he was given control of his father’s real estate company at the age of 25. Since then he’s been in charge of hundreds of business proposals, philanthropic endeavors, and entrepreneurial ventures that most leaders have never even been exposed to. These high-stress, high-stakes experiences have made Trump into the confident, “don’t hold back” cowboy he is today, and people seem to admire him for it.

 

Trump is a powerful leader and he draws a crowd pretty much everywhere he goes but, being a good leader doesn’t make you a good fit to be president. Many of the voters really have no idea what they’re talking about when they are voting for Trump; they simply admire the illusion of Trump as a confident and cunning politician. However, if Trump becomes president, we cannot change our decision once he swears into office once we realize he is a complete fraud.

 

Trump’s idea of a perfect America would be a world power with a strong military that fights its own battles and helps no other country. That idea is called Isolationism, the belief that it is in one’s best interest to take care of one’s own problems without worrying about anyone else’s problems.

 

Trump has gone on the record to say that he will isolate the United States by getting rid of their affiliation with treaties like NATO and NAFTA. Trump also wishes to stir the trade waters with countries like China and Mexico by threatening to cut off negotiations with the countries and start so called, “Trade Wars.” He wishes to take the sweatshops out of these countries and bring those factories to the United States. “I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan. The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” Donald Trump made these comments in July of 2015, during his trip to the U.S.-Mexican border.

 

This is incredibly offensive. Donald Trump believes just because he cuts ties with countries like Japan and China, that automatically makes room for jobs in America. The “jobs” Trump is referring to are jobs in sweatshops that pay their workers next to nothing, and Trump just assumes that these jobs will simply transfer over to the United States and members of the Hispanic community are so poor that they will just flock to these minimum wage jobs as soon as they get the chance.

 

Donald Trump has notoriously been known for being a bigot and a racist. Before and during his run for president, Donald Trump has demonstrated to the public that he is a racist. Donald Trump treats each racial group as a monolith. He treats each race as if they are in their own world where everyone in that race only acts according to their stereotypes. Instead of acknowledging that there’s as much variety among white people as there is among Muslims, Latinos, and black people, Trump puts each race into their own category.

 

Trump has had many opportunities to prove to the voters that he is not the prejudice chauvinist people think he is. The most prominent being the three times he danced around the question of whether or not he renounced the support of former KKK leader David Duke during a televised interview on CNN. Each time Trump was asked about white supremacy or David Duke, he neither confirmed nor denied any affiliation with David Duke or any white supremacy group.

 

Trump’s exact words were, “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists,” he said. “So I don’t know. I don’t know — did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.”

 

Trump knew he was lying but, he also didn’t want to deny anything that would come back to bite him if the public found out the truth. He did not want to look like a supporter of white supremacy but, he also wanted the white supremacist’s vote on Election Sunday. Apparently, Trump decided votes were more important than being associated with the KKK.

 

A major reason Donald Trump’s presidency will most likely harm the reputation of the United States is because Trump is a dangerous man. During his run for president, Donald Trump has said and done some pretty insane things. Even though Trump has changed many of his political views throughout the presidential race, he has stayed true to his beliefs on torture, war, and how to deal with outside threats.

 

Today, President Obama is firmly against torture but, Trump has made it clear that he wants to reinstate all forms of torture, especially waterboarding, and went on record to say he wants to implement “much worse forms of torture.” When talking about national security, Trump talked about how America looked weak because we didn’t torture our prisoners and he went on to say “We have to beat the savages.”

 

Apparently, Trump has big plans for the military; namely, making the military stronger and more aggressive towards hostile countries. Many military officials have spoken out about how they would not follow through with any of the wicked plots Trump has planned for the military. Trump responded by suggesting he would force the military to carry out his objectives regardless if they agreed with the plan or not.

 

When asked about North Korea, Trump said he would consider giving nukes to South Korea and Japan to fight their own battle with North Korea instead of having America get involved. This involves Trump’s whole isolationist movement that has the United States refusing to help any other countries in need; so instead, Trump just wants to give the victim country giant, dangerous weapons and have them deal with the situation on their own.

 

Aside from fully supporting torture and possibly giving other countries nukes, Trump publicly promoted a war crime on Fox News where he said in order to stop the terrorists, “We have to take out their families; We have to go after their wives and children.” If Barrack Obama, or someone we would expect more out of, said something like this on national television, it would be a huge deal, but it was Donald Trump who people expect to say something this insane.

 

If Donald Trump becomes President, he will ruin America in one way or another. Trump may start a war through offending a hostile country, using the military to carry out heinous war crimes, or by isolating the United States and leaving less powerful countries to fend for themselves. America cannot have a President who is a racist that doesn’t respect each race equally because America is the land of freedom and equality. If Donald Trump is elected President, we have no idea what he is going to do but, many signs point to bad things.

 

WRT 205/Spring 2016                                           Grading Rubric: Unit III NYTs Magazine

 

[1]  How well does the title provocatively focus the reader’s attention, as well as the lede? Is it thoughtful, creative, clever? Does it lead the reader into the text and provide some insight into the issue?

 

I really tried to think of a title that would encompass the main point of my article as well as properly resembling a title one would see in the actual New York Times. The title draws the audience in because of how current the topic is, who the topic may affect, and the wit behind the title; using Trump’s slogan against him is pretty clever, if I do say so myself. Once a reader reads a witty title like this, about a character like Donald Trump, most likely, they’re going to be drawn in by it and forced to find out what is in the article.

 

[2]  How well does the introductory section of the article invite the reader into the paper, as well as offer up exigency?  How does it locate a problem or controversy within a context that provides background and rationale?

 

The intro section of the article basically lays out how the argument fits the title and how the argument will be expanded upon within the article. The article has four sections before it hits the main argument and the sections really lead up to show exactly how awful of a person Trump has been in the past, as well as present reasons why Trump will be an awful President.

 

[3] How well does the writer offer up a strong ‘idea’ that requires analysis to support and evolve it, as well as offers some point about the significance of evidence that would not have been immediately obvious to readers.?

 

A lot of people may think Trump is unsuitable to be President but, I believe my article shows the stage past that, the part that people think can’t happen, that is, what will happen if Trump becomes President? This article helps expand the idea around what exactly Trump may or may not do if he gets in the White House.

 

[4] How well does the writer show clarity of thought; uniqueness of presentation; evidence of style; and historicized topics?

 

Personally, I know I did my very best to present the argument “If Trump becomes President, he will ruin America.” I know it is an aggressive agreement but, if Trump does end up as president, something insane or drastically wrong is bound to happen and the purpose of my article is to startle readers to a point of realization that this idea makes sense. In my article, I do  y best to touch all the sides of Trump that people should see in order to make an informed decision on who they are voting for in the upcoming election.

 

[5]  How well does the writer recognize that a NYTs Magazine audience will challenge ideas that are overgeneralized or underdeveloped or poorly explained? (that is, did the writer avoid cliché and vagueness or address points/issues readers are likely to have?)  How well did the writer decide about how to develop, sequence, and organize material?

 

It’s difficult to create the perfect argument and I know my argument is too strong but, there is a give and take between how accurate an argument is and the ability of the article to draw in readers. One wishes to develop an argument that is both well-thought-out and intriguing to an outside audience but, it’s tough when a writer has to be both accurate in all the material involved in the article as well as attractive to others. I tried to organize my material in a way that started with the light stuff at the beginning and ended with the heavier stuff that will leave the reader stunned.

 

[6]  How well does the writer research a controversy, develop a persuasive stance, utilize research about the topic,  and join the ‘debate’ by making an argument of importance?

 

 

My main job in writing this article was to get the facts when it came to what exactly Trump has done and said in the past to help prove he is an unsuitable presidential candidate. Hopefully, by gathering enough facts and making enough significant points I can show my audience just how dangerous Trump can be with the power of the country behind him.

 

[7]  How well does the writer meet or exceed research expectations of assignment requirements (6 appropriate secondary sources, 1 visual source, (or more) and primary research? ).

 

In total, I believe I had 7 or 8 secondary sources and the required scholarly and primary source. I included an image at the beginning of my article but, media wasn’t really required when talking about Trump because it is more about what Trump says that captures his outrageousness rather than any image. The Primary research included the exact transcript of the Fox News interview where Trump said we have to take out the terrorist’s families, which I hope audiences will be shocked by the most.

 

 

[8]  How well does the writer integrate secondary and primary sources (that support and complicate the topic) effectively into the text, introducing and contextualizing them, and “conversing” (i.e. no drop-quoting) in ways that deepen and complicate the analysis?

 

I did my best to use the primary and secondary sources together as ways to show people of Trump’s madness. I really tried to help make the flow of the article great, where one subject naturally transgresses into another subject without people stopping and saying, “Why is this here?”

 

[9 How well does the writer persuade an audience to consider claims made from a particular position of authority on which you have built your research?  How strong and effective is the writer’s use of rhetorical tools (ethos, logos, pathos)?

 

I really tried to persuade audiences with common sense and fear. I tried to show the ridiculous things Trump has done repeatedly in the past and the terrible things Trump is capable of if elected president. I really gave a strong effort to show the ethical and logical reasoning behind my argument by displaying the type of immoral man Trump is and why we cannot have an untrustworthy man like Trump making all the decisions for a world power.

 

 

[10] How well does the writer select appropriate, interesting, revealing visual?  Has the writer placed a visual strategically in the essay and provided relevant commentary on and/or analysis of them?  Do the visuals contribute to the essay in meaningful ways (i.e. would the essay be affected if the writer took the visual away)?

 

I really tried to focus on the content and wording of my article to make the most sense out of my argument but, the reason I chose that specific photo of Trump because it was ironic in a way. Trump consistently will throw-up a peace sign at many of his rallies and public events but, I find it funny that a man who uses a sign for peace so often is one of the most aggressive and hostile presidential candidates in American History.

 

 

[11] How well does the writer show development of final article using various drafts, in-class peer editing and workshops, and/or teacher comments?

 

In my first couple drafts, I didn’t end very strong with my conclusion but, in my final draft, I really tried to end with a summarization and the full meaning of the article. I would continuously change and edit my article based on the feedback from the different activities from class and I really did my best when going from the 800 to 1250 to 1600-word draft to change things around in order to make the most logical and convincing article about why Trump should not be president as I could.

 

[12] How well does the writer use hyperlinks—are they effective/appropriate?

 

I did my best to encompass hyperlinks within the article in place where I used direct quotes or facts or in spots where readers may want to learn more about the subject or if they don’t know exactly what the article is discussing. The hyperlinks in my article are effective because they provide the most specific information on every topic I hit on within the article.

 

[13]  How well did the writer edit for grammar, style, and usage effectively? Does the writer’s attention to sentence level issues help him/her establish authority or credibility on the issue?

 

The overall structure of my article involves correct grammar and proper style and sentence structure to help keep readers reading the article and understanding that I have done my research. If a reader identifies any errors or any repetitiveness in an article, it is typical that he or she will stop reading the article or cease to believe any of the article’s content; so, it is important for the authors to be through and knowledgeable when writing their article.

Today, the majority of people in the United States do not know where their food is coming from. This is probably because the people in charge of our food industry do not want people to know that our food system is completely corrupt.

Corruption is a simple matter of right and wrong. Anyone or anything can become corrupt based on the actions the person or thing practices. In this case, the food system that is used to circulate the majority of the world’s food products to public markets has become corrupt.

The interesting part about our corrupt food system is that most of the people who consume the products have no idea where these products came from or how they were prepared. In the food system we have today, four or five large corporations own the majority of all food products sold in grocery stores today. There are hundreds of different brands of meat, produce, snacks, or whatever types of food you can think of that are sold in a supermarket but, its really only a handful of corporations that own the greater part of all of them.

In the film Food Inc., Eric Schlosser an American author, activist, and journalist talks about how big business has alluded the general public and turned the American food industry into a corporate monopoly. Schlosser goes on to say, “The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved.” Schlosser and the rest of the experts go on to talk about how big business runs the food industry and how their methods to grow bigger and better food have substituted the quality of our food for higher profits. That’s the problem, if people knew that large corporations were behind our food and that they were making our food in an unnatural, inhumane manner, they would probably have something to say about it.

Our food system is corrupt because the people in charge of it know what they are doing to our food is wrong but, they still do it anyway. In an ideal world, the people who know the most about our food would be in charge of developing how our food system works. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.

There are too many problems to count in our food industry today but, a lot of them have to do with how our meat is prepared. The meat in our grocery stores is not prepared in a friendly, heartfelt way. The way most people want to believe that their meat is prepared is that the animal is born and raised on a farm where it was able to roam free and grow the way god intended it to live. They believe the animal was killed humanely by the farmers who raised it in a way that did not make the animal suffer. That would be nice if it were true. The fact of the matter is, in this corrupt food system we have today, animals are basically tortured in cramped quarters from birth up until the moment they are slaughtered.

Michael Pollan, another American author and journalist who worked on Food Inc. discusses how the animals that are raised in these massive farms and slaughterhouses are inhumanely mistreated. Pollan says, “Plus they are now feeding corn to animals like cows who, by evolution, are designed to eat grass and in some cases farmers are even teaching fish how to eat corn because it is so cheap.” Aside from not giving these animals the proper space and freedom to grow, these farms are feeding the animals feed that they cannot naturally digest. The farms use corn feed and growth hormones to fatten up these animals so we can harvest twice as much meat as these animals were supposed to carry.

Besides cows, the chicken is another mass-produced animal that is raised in hellish conditions to satisfy the needs of our corrupt food industry. Several facts and statistics about how the chickens we eat every day are actually being grown are up on truthaboutchicken.org. Today, chickens are being grown to twice the weight of chicken sixty years ago in about half the time. An appalling fact found on this site included, “Many chickens lie in their own waste for much of their lives, with open sores and infections. These unhealthy conditions could potentially increase the risk of foodborne illnesses like salmonella.”

The processes used in our food systems are horrific and mind-boggling but, the worst part is these corrupt practices are potentially life-threatening for humans. Because of the unethical methods used in today’s food industry, humans are contracting various foodborne illnesses from tainted meats that are sold every day in local grocery stores. These illnesses are the result of the unsanitary facilities that are used to raise and prepare these animals for slaughter. Cows and chickens are raised on farms with very little space and little to no maintenance, meaning these animals are constantly walking, living, and sleeping in their own feces which is a great way to get exposed to infections and other types of illnesses.

The number of people that have been getting sick from these types of tainted meat have not necessarily been greatly increasing; the diseases have just been getting worse. Marion Nestle, a well known author and professor of nutrition at NYU, gives us some facts and statistics about these foodborne illnesses and how they’ve progressed in her piece, Resisting Food Safety. She says, “Some years ago, a carefully investigated Listeria outbreak among 142 people who had eaten a commercially produced unpasteurized soft cheese caused 48 deaths and 13 cases of meningitis.” Nestle goes on to talk about how foodborne illnesses used to be some small form of Salmonella or Staphylococcus or some pathogen that was easily treated and resulted in pretty standard, non-lethal symptoms like diarrhea, stomach pains, nausea, etc. However, since the early 1990s the versions of these viruses and bacteria have been getting much more aggressive and much more deadly than they have been in the past. Diseases are scary and its scary to know you can contract these types of diseases from the food you buy at the super market everyday.

If our food system is having all these problems, shouldn’t we be doing something about it? Shouldn’t there be some sort of authoritative body to watch over these food production systems to make sure our food is actually safe to eat? We do, the only problem is, the groups in charge of watching over how our food is made play a big part in how our food industry has become corrupt.

Government programs like the FDA, USDA, and CDC are supposed to watch over food processing facilities and make sure there aren’t any health code violations, unhygienic processing practices, or any other method that could lead to possible contamination of meats or other food products. Consumer Reports, You are what they eat, discussed a great deal about how our government and how our food regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t really doing anything about the way our food is being processed. The members of Consumer Reports were able to talk to feed-company executives and they said, “Our investigation raises concern that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” Even the executives from these corporations agree that the production of their food is a potential risk to the health of their consumer. A major reason for this is that there are not enough inspectors to consistently watch over the vast number of slaughterhouses and livestock farms that are in this country.

The FDA has around 700 employees in charge of inspecting all the processing plants that produce meat, eggs and poultry; which results in each one of these places getting an inspection every one to five years. Even when there are certain health and safety violations that are found in these processing plants, if the farm is owned by one of the large corporations, the heads of the corporations always has a friend on the inside of the FDA or somewhere in these government-based departments to help them get out of it. The makers of Food Inc. were able to show how former corporation executives from places like Monsanto land authoritative positions in departments like the FDA and USDA and are able to help their old business partners when they get into a bind. It is difficult to think of a way to free our food industry from the clutches of big business when these corporate executives have monopolized the industry around them.

The corruption that has overwhelmed our food industry starts and ends with big business. We cannot rely on greedy business owners to take proper care of our food when they already hide so much from the public with their illusions. Large profits are not a reasonable compromise when it puts the consumer at risk. We know what is going on behind the closed curtain of our food system; now its just about making an effort to do something about it.

 

Reflection Questions:

• Describe your understanding of the “writer’s project”? How were you able to identify the texts’ “project”? Discuss your own “project” as it pertains to this particular blog article.

To me, the writer’s project is all about the writer’s mission to use his/her skills as a writer to convey whatever message they are trying to send to the reader as best they can through their words. For each text that we went through, I would need to read the piece multiple times in order to get the full understanding of the work. Once I understood the piece, I could pinpoint the main argument and the main message the author was attempting to present to his/her audience. For my “project” I really tried to just narrow the focus of the entire piece to one main point and then connect the dots between the texts we read and how they related to my piece and how they helped to strengthen my main argument.

• Describe your completion of the “Sorting it Out” workshop? What sections were most beneficial to the development of your ideas—and why? Discuss how this workshop assisted in development of draft and/or assignment organization?

I was a little confused at times during the workshop but, overall I guess it helped narrow down the ideas we had on how to best complete our article. The most helpful sections in the workshop were section D, where we had to basically summarize the main argument of each piece into a few sentences, and the last section where we had to relate different passages from different articles to the same main idea because they helped really narrow down the great deal of information we had to absorb to a few main points. I used the workshop to narrow down the possible arguments I could make for my article to which topics I could best use that included all of them.

• Describe your understanding of synthesis. What is its importance? How did it manifest within your drafts and/or final blog article? Provide examples.

Synthesis is the breaking down of an article, or other piece of literature, to the bare essentials of that work. At first, you may have a very lengthy text about several different topics but, once you use synthesis, you can narrow the article to one main point and the different sections the author uses to strengthen and prove that main point. I needed synthesis to get the main ideas out of the texts we read and to get a couple ideas for a man argument using the information it provided. I pretty much drew an outline for my article laying out which sections would be where and how they would connect to each other and back to the main point. In all the works we read, there were a lot of immoral practices going on; so, I decided to write about the wrongness and corruption in our food industry.

• Describe your own accomplishment (ofsomething) during this unit.

I have a hard time getting the main points out of pieces of literature, like understanding what they really mean, so I was happy that I was able to learn how to extract main ideas from these articles.

• Discuss the evolution of the main idea. Where did you begin (include the example) and show its progress (again, include example) throughout the drafting/revision process. To what do you attribute its evolution?

Basically, whenever we read one of these articles, there was always something wrong happening in the food system. I decided to show the complete corrupt process of our food industry and all the ways it is affecting the consumer. At first it was just the idea of corruption and how the food industry was able to get away with all this stuff. Then, after the revisions, I was able to expand a little more and discuss the immoral processes they use and how it is affecting people and I was just able to get a better understanding of what they were doing and how it was wrong. Just going back over the works and really paying attention helped with my article’s evolution.

• Discuss what organizational strategies you implemented in order to structure this blog article. Provide examples from a section(s) of an earlier draft and other excerpts in later drafts to support your response.

I used an outline, I laid out exactly what I wanted to talk about from each article and how I wanted them to relate back to the main idea. I knew I wanted to use Food Inc. for their inside knowledge of the food industry and how it is corrupt from the farm to the supermarket. I wanted Nestle for her knowledge on foodborne illnesses and how they are affecting consumers through our food system. And I wanted consumer reports for their intel on how the government regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t doing nearly enough to keep our food safe. I would jump straight from one topic to the next without having some sort of bridge between them. I would move from Pollan to Hurst without any context as to what they were saying and how it related back to my topic. In my final revision, I was able to connect each of their views to how the food industry has become corrupt.

• Provide an example of the final draft where you successfully synthesize 3 texts in a concise and direct manner. Discuss how this evolved throughout the drafting process for you.

In my final draft, I used Schlosser, Nestle, and Consumer Reports closely to talk about the corruption of the food industry. I believe they are best utilized to bring their own unique take on my main idea. I couldn’t bring them together into one main point because each of them has their own part in adding up to them total idea that our food system is corrupt. That is why they are necessary to my article.

•  Discuss the evolution of the ‘lede’ in earlier drafts and its final version (provide examples of each): where did you begin, what feedback did you receive, and how did it end up in final blog article?

My first ‘lede’ looked something like this, “During the time that we, as a class, have focused on articles and topics regarding our food system, the thing that disturbs me the most is not the foodborne illnesses or the hellish, inhumane was our food is being produced; it’s the corruption of our food system.” I really didn’t draw the attention of a reader and sort of just jumped right into the facts about the food system. After several revisions it changed to this, “Today, the majority of people in the United States do not know where their food is coming from. This is probably because the people in charge of our food industry do not want people to know that our food system is completely corrupt.” I sort of get to draw the reader in by talking about something that might effect them which makes them concerned so they read on. I started with corruption, it led to how is the food system corrupt, and it lead to how are food system corrupt and how it is affecting you.

•  Name a specific writing/researching/revision goal you’d like to work on during the next Unit projects.

I would like to try and find different ways to best narrow the down the key points in an article or piece of literature because although, the synthesis and “writer’s project” techniques worked, they weren’t the best solution for me to get the most out of each article. I would also like to try and use each piece we discuss to their full potential instead of trying to cram them with others in attempt to make our argument stronger, each one is credible enough as it is. I like this class but, the methods and ideas could be a little clearer.

Today, the majority of people in the United States do not know where their food is coming from. This is probably because the people in charge of our food industry do not want people to know that our food system is completely corrupt.

Corruption is a simple matter of right and wrong. Anyone or anything can become corrupt based on the actions the person or thing practices. In this case, the food system that is used to circulate the majority of the world’s food products to public markets has become corrupt. The interesting part about our corrupt food system is that most of the people who consume the products have no idea where these products came from or how they were prepared. In the food system we have today, four or five large corporations own the majority of all food products sold in grocery stores today. There are hundreds of different brands of meat, produce, snacks, or whatever types of food you can think of that are sold in a supermarket but, its really only a handful of corporations that own the greater part of all of them. In the film Food Inc., Michael Pollan, an American author, activist, and professor of journalism at UC Berkeley talks about how big business has run our American food industry into the ground. Pollan goes on to say, “The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved.” Pollan and the rest of the experts go on to talk about how big business runs the food industry and how their methods to grow bigger and better food have substituted the quality of our food for higher profits. That’s the problem, if people knew that large corporations were behind our food and that they were making our food in an unnatural, inhumane manner, they would probably have something to say about it. Our food system is corrupt because the people in charge of it know what they are doing is wrong but, they still do it anyway. In an ideal world, the people who know the most about our food would be in charge of developing how our food system works. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.

The meat in our grocery stores is not prepared in a friendly, heartfelt way. The way most people want to believe that their meat is prepared is that the animal is born and raised on a farm where it was able to roam free and grow the way god intended it to live. They believe the animal was killed humanely by the farmers who raised it in a way that did not make the animal suffer. That would be nice if it were true. The fact of the matter is, in this corrupt food system we have today, animals are basically tortured in cramped quarters from birth up until the moment they are slaughtered. Eric Schlosser, another American author and journalist from Food Inc. discusses how the animals that are raised in these massive farms and slaughterhouses are inhumanely mistreated. Schlosser says, “Plus they are now feeding corn to animals like cows who, by evolution, are designed to eat grass and in some cases farmers are even teaching fish how to eat corn because it is so cheap.” Aside from not giving these animals the proper space and freedom to grow, these farms are feeding the animals feed that they cannot naturally digest. The farms use corn feed and growth hormones to fatten up these animals so we can harvest twice as much meat as these animals were supposed to carry. Several facts and statistics about how the chickens we eat every day are actually being grown are up on truthaboutchicken.org. Today, Chickens are being grown to twice the weight of chicken Sixty years ago in about half the time. An appalling fact found on this site included, “Many chickens lie in their own waste for much of their lives, with open sores and infections. These unhealthy conditions could potentially increase the risk of foodborne illnesses like salmonella.” The processes used in our food systems are horrific and mind-boggling but, the worst part is these corrupt practices are potentially life-threatening for humans. Because of the unethical methods used in today’s food industry, humans are contracting various foodborne illnesses from tainted meats that are sold every day in local grocery stores. These illnesses are the result of the unsanitary facilities that are used to raise and prepare these animals for slaughter. Cows and chickens are raised on farms with very little space and little to no maintenance, meaning these animals are constantly walking, living, and sleeping in their own feces which is a great way to get exposed to infections and other types of illnesses. The number of people that have been getting sick from these types of tainted meat have not necessarily been greatly increasing; the diseases have just been getting worse. Marion Nestle, a well known author and professor of nutrition at NYU, gives us some facts and statistics about these foodborne illnesses and how they’ve progressed. She says, “Some years ago, a carefully investigated Listeria outbreak among 142 people who had eaten a commercially produced unpasteurized soft cheese caused 48 deaths and 13 cases of meningitis.” Nestle goes on to talk about how foodborne illnesses used to be some small form of Salmonella or Staphylococcus or some pathogen that was easily treated and resulted in pretty standard, non-lethal symptoms like diarrhea, stomach pains, nausea, etc. However, since the early 1990s the versions of these viruses and bacteria have been getting much more aggressive and much more deadly than they have been in the past. Diseases are scary and its scary to know you can contract these types of diseases from the food you buy at the super market everyday.

If our food system is having all these problems, shouldn’t we be doing something about it? Shouldn’t there be some sort of authoritative body to watch over these food production systems to make sure our food is actually safe to eat? We do, the only problem is, the groups in charge of watching over how our food is made play a big part in how our food industry has become corrupt. Government programs like the FDA, USDA, and CDC are supposed to watch over food processing facilities and make sure there aren’t any health code violations, unhygienic processing practices, or any other method that could lead to possible contamination of meats or other food products. Consumer Reports, You are what they eat, discussed a great deal about how our government and how our food regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t really doing anything about the way our food is being processed. The members of Consumer Reports were able to talk to feed-company executives and they said, “Our investigation raises concern that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” Even the executives from these corporations agree that the production of their food is a potential risk to the health of their consumer. A major reason for this is that there are not enough FDA and USDA inspectors to consistently watch over the vast number of slaughterhouses and livestock farms that are in this country. The FDA has around 700 employees in charge of inspecting all the processing plants that produce meat, eggs and poultry; which results in each one of these places getting an inspection every one to five years. Even when there are certain health and safety violations that are found in these processing plants, if the farm is owned by one of the large corporations, the heads of the corporations always has a friend on the inside of the FDA or somewhere in these government-based departments to help them get out of it. We learned a great deal about how former corporation executives from places like Monsanto land authoritative positions in departments like the FDA and USDA and are able to help their old business partners when they get into a bind. It is difficult to think of a way to free our food industry from the clutches of big business when these corporate executives have monopolized the industry around them.

The corruption that has overwhelmed our food industry starts and ends with big business. We cannot rely on greedy business owners to take proper care of our food. Large profits are not a reasonable compromise when it puts consumers at risk. We know what is going on behind the closed curtain of our food system; now its just about making an effort to do something about it.

Corruption is a funny thing. Anyone or anything can become corrupt based on the actions the person or thing chooses to practice. In this case, the food system that is used to circulate the majority of the world’s food products to public markets has become corrupt. The interesting part about our corrupt food system is that most of the people who consume the products have no idea where these products came from or how they were prepared. In the food system we have today, four or five large corporations own the majority of all food products sold in grocery stores today. There are hundreds of different brands of meat, produce, snacks, or whatever types of food you can think of that are sold in a supermarket but, its really only a handful of corporations that own the greater part of all of them. In the film Food Inc., Michael Pollan, an American author, activist, and professor of journalism at UC Berkeley talks about how big business has run our American food industry into the ground. Pollan goes on to say, “The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved.” Pollan and the rest of the experts go on to talk about how big business runs the food industry and how their methods to grow bigger and better food have substituted the quality of our food for higher profits. That’s the problem, if people knew that large corporations were behind our food and that they were making our food in an unnatural, inhumane manner, they would probably have something to say about it. In an ideal world, the people who know the most about our food would be in charge of developing how our food system works. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.

The meat in our grocery stores is not prepared in a friendly, heartfelt way. The way most people want to believe that their meat is prepared is that the animal is born and raised on a farm where it was able to roam free and grow the way god intended it to live. They believe the animal was killed humanely by the farmers who raised it in a way that did not make the animal suffer. That would be nice if it were true. The fact of the matter is, in this corrupt food system we have today, animals are basically tortured in cramped quarters from birth up until the moment they are slaughtered. Eric Schlosser, another American author and journalist from Food Inc. discusses how the animals that are raised in these massive farms and slaughterhouses are inhumanely mistreated. Schlosser says, “Plus they are now feeding corn to animals like cows who, by evolution, are designed to eat grass and in some cases farmers are even teaching fish how to eat corn because it is so cheap.” Aside from not giving these animals the proper space and freedom to grow, these farms are feeding the animals feed that they cannot naturally digest. The farms use corn feed and growth hormones to fatten up these animals so we can harvest twice as much meat as these animals were supposed to carry. Several facts and statistics about how the chickens we eat every day are actually being grown are up on truthaboutchicken.org. Today, Chickens are being grown to twice the weight of chicken Sixty years ago in about half the time. An appalling fact found on this site included, “Many chickens lie in their own waste for much of their lives, with open sores and infections. These unhealthy conditions could potentially increase the risk of foodborne illnesses like salmonella.” The processes used in our food systems are horrific and mind-boggling but, the worst part is these corrupt practices are potentially life-threatening for humans. Because of the unethical methods used in today’s food industry, humans are contracting various foodborne illnesses from tainted meat that is sold every day in our local grocery stores. These illnesses are the result of the unsanitary facilities that are used to raise and prepare these animals for slaughter. The reason for this is that there is not any regulation governing over these facilities making sure these products are not contaminated. Government programs like the FDA, USDA, and CDC are supposed to watch over these facilities and make sure there aren’t any health code violations, unhygienic processing practices, or any other method that could lead to possible contamination of meat. Consumer Reports, You are what they eat, discussed a great deal about how our government and how our food regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t really doing anything about the way our food is being processed. The members of Consumer Reports were able to talk to feed-company executives and they said, “Our investigation raises concern that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” Even the executives from these corporations agree that the production of their food is a potential risk to the health of their consumer. A major reason for this is that there are not enough FDA and USDA inspectors to consistently watch over the vast number of slaughterhouses and livestock farms that are in this country. The FDA has around 700 employees in charge of inspecting all the processing plants that produce meat, eggs and poultry; which results in each one of these places getting an inspection every one to five years. Even if there are certain health and safety violations that are found in these processing plants, usually if the farm is owned by one of the large corporations, the heads of the corporations always have a friend on the inside of the FDA to help them get out of it. The corruption that has overwhelmed our food industry starts and ends with big business. We cannot rely on greedy business owners to take proper care of our food. Large profits are not a reasonable compromise when it puts consumers at risk. We know what is going on behind the closed curtain of our food system; now its just about making an effort to do something about it.